Elisabeth Piller. Selling Weimar: German Public Diplomacy and the United States, 1918–1933.

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Elisabeth Piller’s Selling Weimar: German Public Diplomacy and the United States, 1918–1933 is a richly researched, carefully argued, and clearly written study of German public diplomacy directed toward the United States. While much has been written about public—or what Americans call cultural—diplomacy during the Cold War period, much less has been done on the interwar years. United States cultural diplomacy toward Germany and Europe has received much more attention than German efforts to use soft power to shape American views of Germany. Elisabeth Piller acknowledges that German governments and private institutions practiced public diplomacy both before and after Weimar, but insists that public or cultural diplomacy developed distinctive forms and was accorded greater importance during the Weimar Republic, especially after 1924, than in Wilhelmine or Nazi Germany. The United States was not the only country toward which Weimar officials and civil society organizations deployed their repertoire of public diplomacy initiatives, but it was emphatically the most important, reflecting the post–World War I status and power of the United States.